Frequently advanced and lower level students receive a lot of attention. But what about our college prep students? Do you feel that the lowest students are unmotivated? Maybe they just learn differently and need a little extra help.
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Beth, great comments here. I believe many schools focus on higher level learners more readily or easily than their basic group. Good luck as you begin to answer these questions. I'll look forward to seeing your work unfold!
I assign a lot of current event article reading to my theology class, which is always a mixture of honors, college prep, and lower level students. I assign question prompts on google classroom to hold students accountable for the reading and for basic comprehension. The goal of the assignment is to then discuss the article in relation to the themes, vocabulary and concepts of the content unit. The problem is that the ensuing discussion is dominated by the honors level students, and many of the college prep or lower level students will do poorly on the ensuing quiz even if they completed the homework assignment.
What to do? One thought I have is to make the honors students responsible for designing questions to be discussed in the large group session that align to the content. They could collaborate on this assignment in class and then for homework using Google apps. Each student would be responsible for different questions or content.
While these students are working on the large group discussion questions, I could group the College Prep and lower level students into groups in which I assign them questions that address more of the facts of the article and ask them to demonstrate knowledge of more basic things like vocabulary rather than applications.
I could also be more able to circulate among the lower level students to provide examples that the upper level students would already know.
When we get to the large group discussion, the honors students could provide the discussion questions, but we would then go through the actual synthesis of the article with more, if not all students participating. I could then get a gauge of understanding through a formative assessment at the end of class via Google Forms or Poll Everywhere.
Beth, great comments here. I believe many schools focus on higher level learners more readily or easily than their basic group. Good luck as you begin to answer these questions. I'll look forward to seeing your work unfold!
ReplyDeleteI assign a lot of current event article reading to my theology class, which is always a mixture of honors, college prep, and lower level students. I assign question prompts on google classroom to hold students accountable for the reading and for basic comprehension. The goal of the assignment is to then discuss the article in relation to the themes, vocabulary and concepts of the content unit. The problem is that the ensuing discussion is dominated by the honors level students, and many of the college prep or lower level students will do poorly on the ensuing quiz even if they completed the homework assignment.
ReplyDeleteWhat to do? One thought I have is to make the honors students responsible for designing questions to be discussed in the large group session that align to the content. They could collaborate on this assignment in class and then for homework using Google apps. Each student would be responsible for different questions or content.
While these students are working on the large group discussion questions, I could group the College Prep and lower level students into groups in which I assign them questions that address more of the facts of the article and ask them to demonstrate knowledge of more basic things like vocabulary rather than applications.
I could also be more able to circulate among the lower level students to provide examples that the upper level students would already know.
When we get to the large group discussion, the honors students could provide the discussion questions, but we would then go through the actual synthesis of the article with more, if not all students participating. I could then get a gauge of understanding through a formative assessment at the end of class via Google Forms or Poll Everywhere.